Discussion
The controls I have in mind for my merephone project: 2 buttons & a joystick-switch for primary input; & a 4-gray epaper display for primary output.
My initial thoughts were *slightly* different, before I got my hands on actual hardware.
Its obvious how I'd use this for menus (be it of notifications, contacts, texts, files/folders, dates & times, settings, etc) with back & add buttons. But I also reckon great typing's vital for a modern featurephone!
1/3?
I'm actively preparing to test this idea for low-profile mobile typing upon tactile hardware. Within the next week I should have an idea whether its worth exploring further, delayed due to amateur mistakes.
But if it does work, I'd be keen to use these gestures to facilitate searching those menus.
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One concern is that with visual design I can throw labels onscreen for you to ignore as you become familiar with the design. I can't do the same as I design my own screenreader...
3/4!
Something that occurred to me recently is that I could overload a button for toggling front-facing lights (enabling the epaper screen to be read at night) to toggle a "verbose" screenreader mode.
In verbose mode I'd have the merephone's screenreader verbally describe what its controls do. Whereas when verbose-mode's off it'd just read out menu titles, the selected menu option, & what you've typed.
How does this sound?
4/4 Fin for today!
An "8pen" idea I've heard of for typing is to have you draw loops starting & ending in a center position. The 1st & final side the loop is on can both give 2bits of scancode, clockwise vs anti-clockwise gives another bit. Yielding 5bit scancodes.
Using the buttons as a shift key gives a 6th bit yielding 64 keys. And there's a few gestures left over that can be used to edit text, accept/reject the text, or navigate between keyboards.
I'd have a notation for communicating the layout onscreen.
2/